I'll just put my thoughts here instead of making a huge thread. Feel free to, as most places do, to defend the game as if I attacked you personally... it would be weird if you did otherwise. I need to say it and the game has been out long enough that people shouldn't feel too offended that someone dare tarnish the game even slightly.

I honestly have no idea if I would have still kickstarted the game knowing what I know now. I liked the first game quite a bit, but one thing I know I'd do differently is advertising the game to others. I wouldn't recommend this game to anyone who wasn't a fan of the first game, this game does NOT break out as a obvious huge improvement.

Namely there are three major features highly advertised that aren't anything like they were presented as. They are as follows

1) The Origin System:
-Advertised: You create a character crafting not only their skills and expertise but also their past and their role in this world. Are you a noble of a great house, a foothold in the governance of this specific world? Perhaps you will meet your old friends and allies along the way engrossing your own personal character in this world. A feature never before seen at this scale putting even the likes of Dragon Age Origin to shame!
-Actuality: You can either play a complete blank slate which every single other game does as it is. Or you can play 4+ characters that Larian made themselves. In other words this series has went from what nearly every RPG in existence does and "Lets you make your own character" and instead settles for letting you play their character with less personality then a JRPG character overall.
-Double Bonus: The "Generic character Aspirations" are just bits and pieces of the Larian Characters.

2) Parallel Questing
-Advertised: No longer are you forced to hold hands as you adventure this world doing your own quests and achieving your own goals. You are often even forced to settle your differences through blade instead of word!
-Actuality: You are still forced to hold hands and the number of instances where you can disagree on a quest are very slim even when the situation calls for it.

3) Skill Crafting
-Advertised: Combine skills together to form new ones with many stunning possibilities. Perhaps combining a Summon Spider with a Oil spell will create a Oil spider, add fire and you get a flaming Spider
-Actuality (In theory at least): You can combine two skills to create a new skill... all which are preset with no permutations.
---This could be entirely wrong... in fact I hope it is...

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So all in all what are the features in this game that I honest to goodness believe are better than the first that everyone should appreciate?

There is far better skill synergy between trees (that I hope continues to work), the skill trees are far better and well thought out, CC is kind of sort of not overpowered (it has issues, but that can be ironed out)... and I will always appreciate the lack of Rock Scissor paper.

It isn't my full list I am sure I forgot some. Though not all features you appreciate I necessarily do. I find some of the skill bonuses to be far too gamey.